


Serenity

by Peregrin_Ionad, Pippi_I (Peregrin_Ionad)



Category: Sarah Jane Adventures, Torchwood
Genre: Awesome Ladies Ficathon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-07
Updated: 2011-11-07
Packaged: 2017-10-25 19:59:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/274173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peregrin_Ionad/pseuds/Peregrin_Ionad, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peregrin_Ionad/pseuds/Pippi_I
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Luke and Clyde work for Torchwood and Maria knows nothing is as it seems</p>
            </blockquote>





	Serenity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bookwormsarah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bookwormsarah/gifts).



> Written for the rather brilliant Tw_fem_fest, for bookwormsarah

It’s odd what you find when you flick through the paper. Maria Jackson might be a high-flying journalist writing a weekly column in the UK’s best loved broadsheet, but that doesn’t stop her picking up cheap magazines on the way home from work, and delving into the horrors of the local rag every Thursday.

Every so often she notices a pattern: usually right at the back, the pages that everyone passes over in favour of the headlines and sport, no photo, just a few lines of text. Mysterious lights in Cardiff streets, five people vanishing off the streets of Colchester in ten weeks, car crashes with no victims. Some stories should have been big, but never made it out of Take a Break.

Maria’s not stupid. If there’s anything she learnt as a kid, rushing round after Sarah Jane Smith, it’s to always take a second glance.

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Sarah Jane used to say, knowingly. Maria had always hoped she might end up a little like Sherlock Holmes, though catching aliens not just regular criminals. She’s certainly like Sarah Jane, even down to a house with a supercomputer in the attic.

Not that the house is Sarah Jane’s any more. Maria goes there sometimes, just to see what it’s like. There’s a proper family there now, two kids, even a swing in the garden. She wishes Luke might have thought before he sold it, but he was straight off back to Cardiff, back to whatever he actually does as a job. She sees more of Clyde now, but he doesn’t talk about work and Maria talks about little else.

Cardiff comes up all the time. At first, she thinks it’s because of Luke and Clyde, but there’s something in the back of her mind telling her different, and Maria has learnt to trust that voice. She finally makes up an excuse to go down there, puts the train ticket on expenses and texts Clyde to say she’ll need the spare room. The story that sparks it is more than the usual ‘funny coloured light in the sky’ business and Maria is certain there’s something in it, something calling to her.

When she gets there she finds Luke packed up on the sofa, massive bruise on his face and one arm in a sling.

“Fell down the stairs at work” he tells her, guilelessly, but she knows him too well, knows when he’s lying, and Clyde’s face gives the game away even more. She has a dig round the flat the next day. She might feel guilty, but Clyde and Luke are her best friends and if they’re in trouble she needs to know. And that’s when she finds them - not guns, or drugs, or any of the terrible things she’s been expecting, but stacks and stacks of newspaper and magazine articles, highlighted and stored away, as if for future reference. She reads them and realises that they match, article for article, the ones she’d read and marked at home.

Luke and Clyde don’t get back home until past 1am, and they wake Maria up. They are arguing, voices quiet, but still audible from the spare bedroom.

“.... she could help.” She hears Luke say, “She’s like my mum...”

“No.” Clyde cuts him off sharply. Maria waits for Luke to reply, but he is silent and finally Clyde speaks again. “I don’t want to put her in danger. She’s the only friend we’ve got outside of work.”

Maria realises they’re talking about her, but she waits, frozen. What is their work that they don’t trust her with it? Plus, she’s seen Clyde scream at spiders, she’s definitely braver than him.

Suddenly, Luke speaks again.

“They’ve seen us all, Clyde, they know us. Maria could help, she’s a journalist, she’s the best.”

Maria takes a step back, away from the bedroom door and directly onto a creaking floorboard. The lads fall silent and she knows they’ve heard her, so she opens the door and steps into the light of the kitchen.

“I’ll do whatever you need.” She says, and there’s no turning back.


End file.
